Goal:
Use Home Assistant to use Amazon Echo to play Amazon Music playlists
Resources used:
Home Assistant Community Store – Alexa Media Player
Continue reading “Creating home assistant interface to alexa playlists”Controlling a tuya smart plug from the command line
Background
I have a hybrid home automation system that includes some old X10 devices, Philips hue devices, wemo devices, and tp-link devices. Part of the system is some software that emulates a Philips hue bridge (ha-bridge) that lets me control devices by running linux programs and scripts. This lets me use old X10 radio frequency controllers and motion detectors in my home automation. So far this has worked great.
Continue reading “Controlling a tuya smart plug from the command line”Easy Riffle Stacking
In the normal method of riffle stacking you start with the four aces on top. When you do the shuffles you hold back cards with both the right and left hands, dropping the cards held by the left thumb under the cards held back by the right thumb. At each shuffle the number of cards held back by the left stays the same, but those held by the right decrease.
Continue reading “Easy Riffle Stacking”Adding links to web pages in Home Assistant
I have been playing around with Home Assistant for just a little while now, and while I am impressed with what it does, I find the documentation and the examples to be less than helpful. One thing I wanted to do was simply add a “card” of web links to the UI. Since the Home Assistant interface (Lovelace) is web based you would think that this would be easy.
Continue reading “Adding links to web pages in Home Assistant”Home automation, part 2
This is an update to https://robertjwallace.com/home-automation-smart-home/.
I am finally beginning to move from the X10 system to a more modern system, despite the cost. My existing system is an hybrid of Philips Hue and X10. To integrate the X10 with Alexa I use the X10 CM19 transceiver with the mochad linux driver, and ha-bridge, a Philips Hue emulator. This allowed me to use Alexa to control the X10 system.
Continue reading “Home automation, part 2”Riffle stack
This is something I am playing with.
Effect
The basic effect is that four aces are placed into the deck at random locations and then the deck is shuffled multiple times. Then five hands of poker are dealt out, with the dealer getting the four aces.
Method
Continue reading “Riffle stack”I am a cat lover
I have to admit that I am a cat lover. I can tolerate dogs, some I even like. But cats have my heart. One thing I enjoyed when I was traveling was seeing and taking photographs of cats.
Cat in Valbonne, France
NW Portland, Oregon
Aubry, cat that visited the office, Portland, Oregon
Cat in window, NW Portland, Oregon
Word games for Scrabble training
I enjoy word games like Scrabble and decided to write a couple of games that I could use both for the pleasure of playing, and also as training aids for playing Scrabble and other word games.
Anagram game
The first I wrote is an anagram finding game, simply called wordgame. It shows seven “tiles” any you try to find all of the anagrams.
Word finder game
The other game I wrote is a “word finder“. It can be played on mobile (phone) or desktop devices.
Axtell Lineage
See the book “Axtell Geneology“, my grandfather is listed on page 286.
| Person | Birth year | Death year | Age | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jane Axtell (Mother) | 1920 | 1995 | 75 | |
| Joseph Eugene Axtell | 1889 | 1945 | 56 | |
| John Stockton Axtell | 1845 | 1935 | 90 | |
| Rufus Dodd Axtell | 1815 | 1847 | 32 | |
| Thomas Axtell | 1780 | 1853 | 73 | |
| Daniel Axtell | 1748 | 1826 | 78 | Fought in Revolutionary War. Bio |
| Thomas Axtell | 1727 | 1749 | 22 | |
| Daniel Axtell | 1673 | 1735 | 62 | |
| Henry Axtell | 1641 | 1676 | 35 | Immigrated to US |
| Thomas Axtell | 1619 | 1646 | 27 | |
| William Axtell | 1587 | 1638 | 51 | |
| William Axtell | 1561 | unknown | ||
| William Axtell | 1541 | 1568 | 27 | |
| John Axtell | 1496 | 1553 | 57 | |
| Henrie Axtell | 1474 | 1541 | 67 | |
| Henry Thomas Axtell | 1435 | 1500 | 65 | |
| Thomas William Axtell | 1381 | 1418 | 37 |
Wallace Family Tree
I have traced the paternal linage back to my great-great-great grandfather. Most of this came from the family Bible and was cross checked with records available on the web. My maternal lineage goes further back and can be seen here.
Continue reading “Wallace Family Tree”